Most children and families have not had direct contact with child psychological and psychiatric experts. Instead they encounter developmental theories, etiological explanations and depictions of childhood disorders through indirect channels such as newspapers. Drawing on actor–network theory, this article explores two child psychological and psychiatric modes of ordering children’s mental health discernible in Sweden’s largest morning newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, during the years 1980 to 2008: a psychodynamic mode and a neuro-centered mode. In the article I show how these two relatively contemporaneous modes greatly differed in how they enacted children’s mental health. The psychodynamic mode stressed the parents’ role in structuring and affecting the child’s unconscious and saw them as the primary cause of any mental illness. In contrast, the neuro-centered mode highlighted that mental issues were related to the child’s brain and proposed different solutions depending on whether the child’s brain functioned in a ‘normal’ or ‘atypical’ manner. Each mode moreover suggested differing contexts to their discussions, with the psychodynamic mode solely discussing the parental milieu while the neuro-centered mode mainly focused on how society affected children with ‘atypical’ brains. The two modes thus had significantly diverging implications for the reader on how to understand and manage children and their psychological well-being. I further argue in the article for the relevance of actor–network theory in historical studies of psychology and psychiatry.
...More
Thesis
Felix E. Rietmann;
(2018)
Seeing the Infant Audiovisual Technologies and the Mind Sciences of the Child
(/isis/citation/CBB857801861/)
Article
Carlo Maggini;
Riccardo Dalle Luche;
(2022)
An overview on Hebephrenia, a diagnostic cornerstone in the neurodevelopmental model of Schizophrenia
(/isis/citation/CBB865868388/)
Book
Segal, Nancy L.;
(2012)
Born Together--Reared Apart: The Landmark Minnesota Twin Study
(/isis/citation/CBB001320238/)
Article
Hirshbein, Laura;
Sarvananda, Sharmalie;
(2008)
History, Power, and Electricity: American Popular Magazine Accounts of Electroconvulsive Therapy, 1940--2005
(/isis/citation/CBB000774199/)
Article
Gunnarssona, Andreas;
Elama, Mark;
(2012)
Food Fight! The Swedish Low-Carb/High Fat (LCHF) Movement and the Turning of Science Popularisation against the Scientists
(/isis/citation/CBB001211883/)
Book
Shuttleworth, Sally;
(2010)
The Mind of the Child: Child Development in Literature, Science, and Medicine, 1840--1900
(/isis/citation/CBB001033221/)
Article
Frank C. P. van der Horst;
Karin Zetterqvist Nelson;
Lenny van Rosmalen;
René van der Veer;
(2020)
A Tale of Four Countries: How Bowlby Used His Trip Through Europe to Write the WHO Report and Spread His Ideas
(/isis/citation/CBB078112505/)
Article
Peter Skagius;
Ann-Charlotte Münger;
(2016)
Professional Reinventions: Swedish Psychologists, 1990–2010
(/isis/citation/CBB271607263/)
Article
Curtis, Scott;
(2011)
“Tangible as Tissue”: Arnold Gesell, Infant Behavior, and Film Analysis
(/isis/citation/CBB001034609/)
Article
Arnett, Jeffrey Jensen;
Cravens, Hamilton;
(2006)
G. Stanley Hall's Adolescence: A Centennial Reappraisal: Introduction
(/isis/citation/CBB000770153/)
Article
Lorch, Marjorie;
Hellal, Paula;
(2010)
Darwin's “Natural Science of Babies”
(/isis/citation/CBB001034935/)
Essay Review
Herman, Ellen;
(2001)
How Children Turn Out and How Psychology Turns Them Out
(/isis/citation/CBB000100117/)
Article
Jacob L. Mackey;
(2019)
Developmental Psychologies in the Roman World: Change and Continuity
(/isis/citation/CBB663112183/)
Article
Dick Kasperowski;
Niclas Hagen;
(June 2022)
Making particularity travel: Trust and citizen science data in Swedish environmental governance
(/isis/citation/CBB251191827/)
Article
Varga, Donna;
(2011)
Look--Normal: The Colonized Child of Developmental Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001033717/)
Article
Simonton, Dean Keith;
(2010)
Research Notes: The Curious Case of Catharine Cox (Miles): The 1926 Dissertation and Her Miles-Wolfe (1936) Follow-Up
(/isis/citation/CBB001033697/)
Article
Benzaquén, Adriana Silvia;
(2001)
Kamala of Midnapore and Arnold Gesell's Wolf Child and Human Child: Reconciling the Extraordinary and the Normal
(/isis/citation/CBB000100104/)
Article
Helene Ratner;
(2016)
Modern Settlements in Special Needs Education: Segregated Versus Inclusive Education
(/isis/citation/CBB214311922/)
Article
Koffman, Ofra;
(2012)
Children Having Children? Religion, Psychology and the Birth of the Teenage Pregnancy Problem
(/isis/citation/CBB001232608/)
Article
Nelson, Karin Zetterqvist;
Sandin, Bengt;
(2013)
Psychodynamics in Child Psychiatry in Sweden, 1945--85: From Political Vision to Treatment Ideology
(/isis/citation/CBB001320336/)
Be the first to comment!